


Lemongrass and Ginger

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: (time will pass like a stomach ache), F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Post-Canon, Tokyo Ghoul Secret Santa 2015, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5478182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the beginning after the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lemongrass and Ginger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheHangedMan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHangedMan/gifts).



There is a graveyard.

It is very busy.

Hide visits every Monday. Often, he runs into other people he knows as he makes his rounds. Mado is the one he runs into most often. They visit many of the same graves. Usually, Hide leaves her to linger at Amon’s. Once in a while, if the weather is bad, they share an umbrella and go for lunch afterwards. They never talk much. It’s not been long enough for that.

Occasionally, he encounters Tsukiyama, whose schedule for visits is dependent even more so than Hide’s on politics. At first, it was awkward. The entire mausoleum at the top of the hill the graveyard rests on is his family. Tsukiyama is never very talkative in these encounters. Neither is Hide. It is the opposite of how they are otherwise.

Hide knows that Tsukiyama and Mado also occasionally encounter each other. Once in a great while, the three of them acknowledge their shared destination. It’s not because they dislike each other. Rather, they associate nothing positive with the other. When Mado and Tsukiyama join Hide, it's usually in the early spring, when the cemetery was built two years ago, and on the September anniversary of the battles that created the grave all three of them visit.

Kaneki is the connecter where the threads intertwine even in death.

 

The first time around, Hide tried to save Kaneki.

The second time around, Kaneki saved Hide.

 

These days, Hide lives in a small apartment in Chiyoda.

It’s not the most personal of abodes. It’s not at all like Hide’s room in high school and early university, which had been full of posters, snacks, and loose CDs. Now, Hide has a calendar pinned in the entranceway over his shoes. A pair of running shoes. Three different dress shoes, one in brown, two in black. House slippers for Mado and Tsukiyama, who are the only people who visit. 

“It’s so much like mine I almost expect cat hair,” Mado murmurs, holding out pastries.

“It’s so grim,” Tsukiyama comments, flowers in his arms.

Hide’s been over to Mado’s enough to know that their apartments are essentially carbon copies of each other. The buildings were built within a few months after the September battle. Maris Stella rules Mado’s apartment. It makes getting birthday and Christmas gifts for Mado easy. New cat toys are always appreciated.

Neither Hide nor Mado know where Tsukiyama lives. It’s for everyone’s safety. There is still violence regarding the changes to ghouls in society. Hide can only suspect that Tsukiyama lives somewhere both secure and fairly luxurious. He does, however, live alone. 

“Why?” Mado once asked after a particularly long Diet session.

Tsukiyama just stared at her for a long moment before picking up his coffee. Hide doesn’t remember what he said to save the atmosphere. It probably wasn't his best effort.

The fact of the matter is the answer is obvious. It’s the same for all three of them. It’s the grave they visit. It’s why all three of them are in the National Diet, screaming at each other from different sides of the aisle. It’s why they have each other’s phone numbers so that they can text each other if there’s protesters and reporters at the cemetery. On those days, Hide is the only one who can visit graves. He wasn’t a CCG agent. He never wielded a quinque. He is not a ghoul.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Tsukiyama asked the next time they went for coffee.

He wasn’t looking at either of them, which meant he was addressing both of them. Hide grimaced. Mado sipped her coffee.

“No,” Hide said.

“Yes,” Mado said. “Are you?"

Tsukiyama looked back at them without turning his head. It’s his good side.

“Of course,” he said before smiling, a very empty expression.

Despite himself, it made Hide feel very lonely. He’d gone out of his usual hours to the cemetery that evening. It was summer, so it was just before twilight. He brought an orange to set in front of Kaneki. Not that Kaneki had ever been particularly fond of oranges, but it’s something to do, and it’s not as if it would be appropriate to bring meat. Mado texts him the next day, asking if he knows who left the orange. 

Hide lies.

He does that with them sometimes. Not because he doesn’t trust them because he does. Out of everyone Hide currently has to work with, Mado and Tsukiyama are the most center of their parties. Obviously, Mado aligns more often with CCG supporters and Tsukiyama with ghouls, but they’re good people. It’s why Kaneki thought they were important and why they loved him. 

It makes Hide’s stomach burn.

 

Life goes on.

By the time three years have passed, Hide has a stack of collectible BDs by his television. He’s subscribed to a couple of book clubs, both humor-themed, that send packages of three to six books per month. Tsukiyama noticed the books stacking up and mail-ordered a bookcase to Hide’s apartment. It’s noticeably more expensive than any other furnishing, which meant Mado knew exactly where it originated when she saw it. 

“Ridiculous,” she muttered, hanging up the purse Tsukiyama mail ordered to her apartment on Hide’s coat rack.

Hide meets Mado’s boyfriend at the beginning of October. He’s one of the managers at the coffee shop they all frequent. They make polite conversation in Mado’s living room before he has to leave for a shift at work.

“It’s nice,” Mado comments as Hide and her sit on opposite ends of her dining table, “having someone to talk to who wasn’t involved in everything.”

Hide nods. He understands conceptually, but he can’t imagine being with someone who wouldn’t be able to ever completely understand what happened. Once in a great while, he talks with Nishiki, who moved to a very remote area of Hokkaido with Kimi. The exchanges are frank, almost painfully so, but it’s needed. Even with Mado and Tsukiyama, Hide can’t always speak his mind.

“It’s bullshit,” Nishiki says, crossing his arms and looking out the window. “It’s better than it was before, of course, but it’s still bullshit.”

They live so remotely, Hide is well-aware, because they have a little girl. Hide has only seen her once in early infancy when Kimi carried her by briefly in a video conference call. Sometimes, she cries on the other end of the line. Hide does not know if she can eat human food. He doesn’t even know her name.

It’s better, of course, that he doesn’t. Hide himself, while freer to move around in public than Mado and Tsukiyama, is not free of controversy. He worked for the CCG but betrayed them. He never aligned himself with ghouls, but he assisted them. He’s in the middle. It makes him valuable, the only neutral voice. No one trusts him.

It’s a large reason why Hide has not been able to make connections with those who were not involved with Kaneki in some manner. Only people who knew Kaneki understand why Hide did as he did and continues to do. Why Hide wants so badly for humans and ghouls to find some way to coexist together. He’s not faking it. It’s not for political gain. It is Hide’s sincere wish.

He doesn’t want Kaneki’s story to repeat itself.

“It won’t,” Tsukiyama says when Hide voices this to him in a rare moment of weakness. “No one will ever be like him.”

That’s true, too. There are a thousand reasons why, the least of which is Kaneki’s peculiar biology. Kamishiro Rize is dead. Kanou’s records were burned up before anyone could get a hold of them. Much of what has come to pass had to do with Kaneki’s temperament. His endurance. His resilience. His train of thought as twisted and damning as it was.

_I want to die in a cool way!_

Hide shivers. He reaches up, turning off the treadmill. He steps off, taking his towel from the railing to mop up his face and neck. The gym is very quiet this early in the morning. The only person he encounters regularly at this time is Yonebayashi Saiko, who uses the stationary bicycle. They never talk. She always had headphones in, watching something on her phone.

“I didn’t know she lived nearby,” Mado said in surprise when Hide mentioned he’d seen her at the gym, which was apparently a shock in itself. “But, now that I think about it, it’s not so surprising.”

Her brother is on Tsukiyama’s side of the aisle. He’s an analyst of some sort. Hide has never heard him speak. He wears an eyepatch, which originally reminded Hide of Kaneki. In one of the fights that broke out, however, someone punched it off. It stopped the fight. There’s a gaping, badly scarred hole of a ruined socket under it. He didn’t make a sound. He’s mute.

“Experiments,” Mado admitted when Hide asked her on a Monday because Tsukiyama has a hair-trigger temper regarding questions of people on his side of the aisle. “Not all the Quinx worked.”

It’s an understatement. Most were failures. It’s something that is brought up over and over. Human experimentation has not lost its horror to the public. It hasn’t lost its horror with Hide. Ghoul experimentation turns Hide’s stomach as it does with ghouls who are willing to be vocal. Both Mado and Tsukiyama, despite everything, are almost blasé about it.

“It’s sickening,” Hide says to Nishiki. 

“What did you expect?” Nishiki says, frowning as if in disappointment.

Hide doesn’t know. Despite their obvious differences, Mado and Tsukiyama are mirror images of each other in a lot of ways. Both of them have tempers and tend to lash out when they feel threatened. Mado lost both her parents to ghouls. The CCG exterminated Tsukiyama’s family. They like cats, fashion, and soap operas. The latter they talk about over coffee if they’re both in particularly good moods.

It makes Hide realize that even with them he’s apart. He didn’t lose is family violently. Rather, his parents are still alive. They live in Hiroshima, and Hide doesn’t have much contact with them. They aren’t on bad terms, but it’s difficult. They thought Hide was dead for three years only to find out he’s alive and mixed up in the greatest battle between humans and ghouls in a hundred and fifty years. They don’t know how to talk to him, and Hide doesn’t know how to talk to them. 

“Your parents are still alive?” Tsukiyama asks, momentarily baldly incredulous.

Hide grimaces. It’s almost his father’s birthday, which is three days before Christmas. The only reason he asked Tsukiyama, breaking their usual silence on Mondays, is he’s desperate for gift ideas. 

“Yeah,” he says, a bit sharper than necessary; he takes a deep breath of the chilled winter air to control himself. “My dad likes his fashionable things, but, well…”

“You and Kaneki both had a strange sense,” Tsukiyama says, again very blunt.

Hide frowns. He looks at Tsukiyama fully for the first time. He’s flushed and there’s a slightly off quality to the way he holds himself. It’s cold, but he looks like he’s dressed for it. Hide wonders how long Tsukiyama has been standing in the cemetery. Tsukiyama recently grumbled that he’s on a diet, which had confused Mado and Hide.

“Ghouls go on diets?” Mado had asked, her fascination with ghoul biology clear as the overriding reason behind the question.

“ _Ghouls_ ,” Tsukiyama grit out, his hand tightening on his coffee cup and making it creak, “are perfectly capable of all the physical, mental, and emotional follies of humans." 

He has some sort of management team that micromanages his life. Hide would argue that Tsukiyama, who isn’t just involved with politics but with an international business conglomerate, needs it. He can’t imagine what sort of hell Tsukiyama’s calendar is. He was on television last night, walking the red carpet at a gala function. Hide had been invited, but he’d had the option of turning it down. He’d been surprised to find Tsukiyama here, so early on a Monday.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Tsukiyama says, but it’s very loud and to his family’s mausoleum. “I’m glad you’d look to me for your family’s needs. What’s your price point?”

It’s how Hide ends up going Christmas shopping with Tsukiyama. It’s actually not an unpleasant experience. They end up in a private club in Shinjuku while a team of personal shoppers take care of what Hide needs. It’s clearly a ghoul club, but Hide finds no one blinks at him here. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s sitting at a table with Tsukiyama or if this is simply the atmosphere of the club.

“I came here once,” Tsukiyama says very suddenly and in such low tone that Hide almost misses it, “with Kaneki-kun.”

Hide swallows. He sets down his tea. Lemongrass and ginger. He had lunch, too, a very good Caesar salad. Tsukiyama watched him eat with a fascination that would seem peculiar if he wasn’t himself. 

“Tell me about it,” and maybe it’s baldly desperate, but Hide doesn’t care.

Tsukiyama looks down. Rubs his thumb over his other where his hands rest against his chest. It took Hide a long time to notice, but there’s a shyness to Tsukiyama. A sweetness. It’s another thing Mado shares with Tsukiyama. They hold the best parts of themselves back. It takes them ages to become comfortable enough to let them out. Hide isn’t and never will be like that. He is who he is, his heart bright and shining in his eyes and on his face.

“It was nice. Quiet. We,” and Tsukiyama looks away, fingers curling against each other, pressing, “didn’t talk much. It was better when we didn’t. I understand that now.”

It burns. Despite years of knowing Kaneki, Hide hadn’t really understood him. It was impossible to, especially after the accident. Hide can’t blame himself, but the sting -

“I used to think,” Hide says, and it’s cracked, barely words anymore, “I could fix him.”

Tsukiyama snorts. It doesn’t offend Hide. He’d rather that Tsukiyama laugh at him because that’s normal. It’s familiar. It doesn’t have the stink of tragedy.

It’s actually a very pleasant day. Hide gets Christmas and New Years gifts he’d never have thought of otherwise. Tsukiyama introduces him to several ghouls that Hide has seen him pictured with in the past. Everyone in the club keeps mostly to themselves. Tsukiyama calls Hide a car when he’s ready to go.

A thought strikes Hide as he gets into the car.

“What are you doing for the holidays?"

For a moment, Tsukiyama goes blank. He stares at Hide, hands at his sides. A strange series of expressions pass over his face. Uncertainty. Suspicion. A very obvious withdrawing. He looks down. Somewhere very far away. 

“I hope your parents like the gifts,” Tsukiyama says before turning away.

Lying awake in bed, Hide guesses he should have expected an answer like that. He doesn’t know what Mado is doing for Christmas or New Years, and he isn’t invited. He imagines she must be spending it with her boyfriend and old friends, probably former CCG. He hopes that she has a good time. Maybe gets kissed under the mistletoe. The thought makes him smile.

He closes his eyes.

   
   
The fourth year begins better than the ones before.

Hide takes up cycling. Not just for getting to work or going to the market but amateur competitive circuits. He buys a proper racing bike, new gear, and signs up for lessons twice a week. It forces him to take a half day on Thursdays and all of Sunday off. It changes his visits to the cemetery on Mondays somewhat as well. He isn’t so inclined to linger. It’s easier to say what he needs to say and go on if he doesn’t encounter Mado or Tsukiyama.

He also, because those two are the closest he can call friends locally, begins to try to do things unrelated to work with them. At first, both Mado and Tsukiyama give him awkward looks.

“I can’t drink,” Tsukiyama points out the first time Hide suggests they go to a bar.

“That’s not the point,” Hide says as Mado chews a piece of muffin. “We should do something different. We’ve been doing the same thing. For four years.”

They end up going out to Shinjuku. Mado suggests the place. It’s more of a restaurant than a bar, so there’s coffee. Tsukiyama reads the menu for far too long to be strictly comfortable and then lies without blinking in order to hold onto it without ordering. It fascinates Mado. It makes Hide a little nervous.

The drinks help with that. In fact, after his second beer, Hide wonders why they’ve never done this before. Mado tells a long-winded but very amusing story about her early days in the CCG before her father died. At first, Hide worries it might offend Tsukiyama, but he laughs at it, too.

“So that’s what happened,” he murmurs.

Mado’s eyebrows raise. “Did you know Applehead?”

Tsukiyama swirls his coffee, grinning in a peculiar way. “You hear about idiots,” he says before chuckling to himself. “What a funny story.”

Mado chuckles, too. Hide doesn’t really get the humor of the situation, but if they’re having fun, it’s fine. 

They keep drinking. Hide finds himself laughing more as the conversation turns towards their current colleagues. Mado snickers, leaning low at the table with her elbows on the surface. Tsukiyama watches them, head cocked to the side. Suddenly, he straightens slightly, a wide, warm smile spreading over his face. It takes both Hide and Mado aback. He looks completely different. Happy.

“You’re drunk,” Tsukiyama says.

“No,” Mado says, very loud.

“Yes,” Hide says.

Tsukiyama laughs. So does Mado after a moment. It makes Hide feel so happy. In all four years of knowing them, Hide realizes he’s never seen this part of Tsukiyama or Mado. Uncontrolled. Unfettered. Honest. He wonders if Kaneki knew these sides of them. He wonders if he’s gained something even Kaneki didn’t own. He has the insane urge to go to Kaneki’s gravestone and ask.

They stay up all night, moving from the restaurant back to Hide’s appointment. For the first time together, it’s fun. Tsukiyama makes Hide and Mado drink water after their stomachs come to remind them of all the alcohol they’ve consumed, and both of them don’t comment on the small packet of something that Tsukiyama steps into Hide’s bathroom to eat. Hide feels strangely young. He’s not even thirty yet.

“Do you think,” Hide asks, breaking his self-imposed rule to not visit Kaneki more than twice a week, “it could have always been like this? If we weren’t always separated… If we hadn’t always—but, it’s silly. Sorry. You -”

Kaneki died for this, Hide realizes now. He didn’t just die because he wanted to save Hide. He didn’t just die because he wanted to be cool. He didn’t die selfishly or unselfishly. He wanted his life to mean something. And it does. It always will.

“Have you considered,” Nishiki says when he picks up the phone as Hide sits on the steps of the Tsukiyama family mausoleum because it’s begun to rain and it’s good cover, “taking a vacation?”

“No,” Hide says before he even has to think about it. “I can’t. I have so much work to do -” 

“Alright,” Nishiki says, annoyed; he sighs explosively. “Look. You’re not like your two pals. You’re not trapped there, you know.”

At first, Hide is angry with Nishiki. He hangs up, cursing himself for thinking anyone would understand. He looks up at the ceiling and immediately wishes he hadn’t. It’s engraved with roses. He looks out at the rain. There’s a family standing underneath a golf umbrella. There’s flowers throughout the cemetery. He thinks he can see Shizuya in front of the Shinohara family graves. It is the valley of the dead.

Hide picks up his phone. Speed dials.

“Mado-san,” he says, interrupting her greeting, “have you ever thought about getting married?”

There’s a long silence. “Hide-san,” she says, very carefully, “where are you?”

She joins him at the mausoleum. She brings a black golf umbrella and a towel, although Hide isn’t wet. She spends a long moment looking around, at the stone, the carvings, Tsukiyama’s most recent bouquet of flowers. They’re very fresh, which means he was either here yesterday or in the night. Both Hide and Mado have long suspected that Tsukiyama comes and goes through the cemetery after closing.

“What’s going on?”

Hide looks at the door. He’s never seen inside. It’s private and he knows if he tries the door it’ll be locked. He wonders if Mado has been in. He wonders if there’s even anything in there or if it’s empty like over half the graves in this place.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”

He can feel her looking at him. The handles of the doors clearly used to be part of another building. They look sharp and strange and out of place.

“You loved him,” Mado says, very softly, “didn’t you?”

Hide shuts his eyes. Swallows. It burns.

“Yes,” he says, sobs. “More than anything else.”

He loved Kaneki from the moment he met him. Young as they were, Hide had known immediately that here was someone special. Maybe not to anyone else back then or not even to himself, but to Hide, Kaneki was special. It was his mission to make Kaneki see it. He was Hide’s sun, moon, stars, sky, oxygen. There was no one else like him. There never will be.

“I can see it,” Mado says, very lowly. “He was a good man. Under all of it. Even in the end.”

“That’s not,” Hide chokes out, curling in on himself, on his knees, “why I loved him.”

He didn’t care if Kaneki was good or bad. If he was kind or cruel. If he was right or wrong or anywhere in between. If he was rich or poor or powerful or weak. He didn’t care that Kaneki was hurt and a half-ghoul. He didn’t even want to fix him in the end. He’d just wanted Kaneki to know he was loved. And he didn’t want -

“I don’t want to forget him.”

Because he is. With each day that passes, he’s less sure what Kaneki sounded like. What he would do or say when Hide talks to his grave. He doesn’t know what Kaneki would think of the changes that are occurring for ghouls and humans. He doesn’t know and he can never know.

Kaneki is dead.

Everyone is moving on. Nishiki and Kimi have their daughter and their life far away from everything. Touka and Hinami are somewhere, not in contact with anyone from the past. Mado has her boyfriend and a whole group of friends both from the past and new. Tsukiyama has his business and politics and a team to micromanage and care for him. Hide is the only one who is alone. Alive among the dead.

“You’re not going to forget,” Mado says, almost drowned out by the rain.

No. He won’t. He can’t. 

Hide loves him.

  

It’s halfway through the fourth year that Hide decides to move out of Tokyo.

“Come stay with us,” Kimi says over video conference. “As long as you need.”

“I’ll pick you up,” Nishiki says after forwarding a specific address that isn’t their house. “Bring whatever you need.”

Neither Mado nor Tsukiyama are surprised. He tells them on a Monday that he asks them to do the rounds at the cemetery with him. 

“You’ve been worn down for a while,” Mado points out, not unkindly.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Tsukiyama says, almost teasingly.

Hide doesn’t take much. He throws out the dress shoes. The suits. He drops the BDs and books off at a secondhand store. In the end, he only has a suitcase and a backpack. He deletes his phone of all contacts except Nishiki, Kimi, Mado, and Tsukiyama. He books a train to the closest station to where Nishiki will pick him up.

There’s only one thing left to do.

He buys a dozen oranges. A lot of flowers. So many he has to buy a couple of large carrier bags. He buys whatever looks fresh and he thinks could please Kaneki. He drags them all to the grave and arranges them as neatly as possible. They pile so high they cover the stone. He cuts his right thumb and left ring finger on rose thorns. It feels appropriate in a way.

He takes a picture of the grave. Of Kaneki. He twists around and takes a selfie. He sends both pictures to Nishiki, Kimi, Mado, and Tsukiyama. Puts his phone in his pocket. He stands for a long time in front of Kaneki. He doesn’t think. Doesn’t talk. The sun moves in the sky. He’s going to get sunburned.

“I,” he says, “am going away for a while. I’ll be back. One day. I promise.”

He turns. Walks down the row. The cuts on his fingers itch. He stops. Looks back.

The sun is high. The shadows are small, tiny, almost non-existent. He’s tied wet paper towels around all of the flower stems. Tsukiyama will come by and fix them. Mado will help make them last. Nishiki will be waiting for Hide in a few hours. Kimi said that they have a bike. They’ll go cycling.

Hide smiles. Waves.

“I promise,” he says louder, and then, as loud as he can: 

“I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this made you cry as asked, giftee


End file.
